AI literacy framework to guide faculty and students

Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Faculty Fellow Paul Shovlin and colleagues have established a literacy framework for artificial intelligence (AI) arising from the center's dynamic position statement on generative AI in teaching and learning. This framework is designed to assist faculty and students as they build literacy.

AI literacy consists of at least four integrative domains of critical thinking. These are not discrete components that can be taught well independently but often co-exist and co-inform one another. They are equally important.

• Effective practices address how to engineer prompts, select particular AI applications and understand the affordances and limitations of different platforms, among other approaches.
• Ethical considerations are both narrow (for example those related to privacy or security) and broad (for example, larger ethical concerns, such as inherent biases embedded in programming or training, exploitation of human trainers of LLMs and power consumption of servers).
• Rhetorical awareness is an understanding of audience expectations and how GenAI use may be effective or counterproductive to the success of communication.
• Subject matter knowledge is crucial because sufficient knowledge of the subject matter is required to effectively review, query and transform AI products.

AI literacy is a mix of the theoretical or conceptual with application and practice learning.

AI literacy includes both writing and reading skills. This means writing and reading skills are a necessary precursor to AI literacy; in addition, AI literacy requires a distinct kind of writing and reading.

Healthy AI literacy initiatives must have a place for those cautious of, skeptical of, and even resistant to, the technology. This means that AI literacy for a proponent may look different than AI literacy for the more cautious. Both, however, will advance literacy and application through an exchange of perspectives and research. Individual agency should be respected through options for literacy development. 

Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) provide an opportunity for OHIO instructors to collaborate with their peers to explore a topic of interest related to teaching and learning.

Most FLCs include faculty from different disciplines, which helps to foster discussion across a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. Learning communities typically meet for a semester, often have a stipend associated with completion and sharing learning, and participants work toward completing goals related to the community topic.

This spring, three FLCs are open to OHIO instructors. Applications are currently being accepted.

Facilitating Student Career Readiness will help faculty enhance confidence and skills in leading career-related conversations with students. The FLC will encourage participants to actively engage students in career-focused discussions and activities and to collaborate with institutional stakeholders engaged in career readiness work at OHIO. 

Alternative Grading: Rethinking Assessment will explore and critically evaluate alternative grading practices, such as Specifications Grading, Contract Grading and Ungrading, with the goal of fostering equitable and student-centered assessment approaches. Faculty will explore and develop innovative, student-centered grading approaches that prioritize learning, proficiency and meaningful feedback over traditional grading models that focus on the grade rather than learning. 

Through Character Education Across Disciplines, we aim to convene a community of faculty across colleges and disciplines to unite, cultivate and assess the landscape of character education work at Ohio University. 

University faculty and staff involved in exploring generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in teaching and learning continue to receive recognition for their work regionally and nationally. 

CTLA Faculty Fellow Paul Shovlin, assistant professor of English, was interviewed by 10 WNBS for a news segment on identifying AI-generated content. The segment, "AI-generated campaign ad in South Western school board election raises questions about misinformation," offered viewers and readers Shovlin's advice: It begins with the 4 S’s:

• STOP: As in, stop and think about what you just watched.
• SENSE CHECK: How did the video make you feel?
• SCRUTINIZE: Play the video a few times. AI has trouble with eyes, hands, mouths and skin tones. Even the lighting may look off.
• And lastly, THINK OF THE SOURCE: Where are you watching it? Who is posting it? Is it a credible source? Where else can you find the video?

Shovlin recommended asking: Am I feeling fear, anger, disgust, humor? These are some of the strong emotions that people draw on in videos like this. Is it too perfect? Is it too sensational? Is it too shocking? And then ask yourself, who stands to gain if I believe this video and if I share this video? View the full broadcast and read the story.

Paul Benedict, associate professor, College of Business, recently appeared in an episode of the Getting Smart Podcast. Tom Vander Ark speaks with Benedict, who also directs the Center for Entrepreneurship at Ohio University, about the COB AI initiative. In just two years, the college transformed how students think about AI, entrepreneurship and real-world problem-solving. From rapid prototyping workshops to AI-powered business solutions, he shared how OU is preparing students to be AI-capable and thrive in a tech-driven world.  Listen on Apple Podcasts.

CTLA Executive Director Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo presented to and serves on the faculty for the American Association of Colleges & Universities 2025-26 Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum. The institute offers a structured, eight-month experience for participating teams to develop and implement an AI-focused action plan tailored to their institution's needs. With ongoing support from institute faculty, teams refine their plans throughout the year through consultative sessions and cross-team planning meetings. 

CTLA Faculty Fellow Basil Masri Zada, assistant professor of instruction, Digital Art + Technology, is expanding open-source GenAI model exploration, collaborations and applications to allow students free access on private secure connections. This includes access to image and sequencing models, in addition to Large Language Models (LLMs) with ability to train new models. He and his collaborators are also working on new models for video and 3D. One of his current projects is to train a GenAI chatbot that can be used in museums as a customizable docent to accompany visitors at the OHIO Museum Complex (STEM + Art based).  

CTLA Faculty Fellow Jen Lisy, assistant professor of instruction, Education-Zanesville, presented "AI as Co-Intelligence: Course Redesign and the Science of Learning" to the Ohio Confederation of Teacher Education Organizations. Lisy encouraged teacher educators to prepare preservice teachers to ethically use AI without short-circuiting learning. New course materials, assignments, and resources must be developed to support students' successful use of these tools. By applying the science of learning and utilizing AI as a co-intelligence or a collaborator to support the development of content, professors can reshape their courses to meet the changing needs of their preservice teachers in this new digital landscape.

The annual Spotlight on Learning Conference, a project of the faculty-led Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Committee, is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. Organizers hope the earlier offering will allow instructors to immediately implement instructional approaches and evidence-based strategies, benefitting students in their spring semester courses and beyond. 

From Scholarly Teaching to Research, a CTLA faculty development certification, comprises five workshops over the spring semester 2026, introducing faculty or instructional teams to this type of inquiry; assisting them to curate resources and conduct literature reviews; equipping them to conduct  (or supporting their review) of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies; and guiding them from teaching problem identification to data collection and analysis.

All components of From Scholarly Teaching to Research will be offered in a hybrid format and recorded to accommodate course schedules with project development occurring along the way. The actual project may be conducted during the following summer or fall semester. In addition to a $1,000 stipend, completers will leave the experience with a conference presentation proposal or a SoTL article draft to refine for submission to identified journals or other media. 

For additional information about the certification, email CTLA.

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